Stranger Photos

It is a disconnected world. It is a world that looks more into their phones and computer screens than the people next to them. It is a world that rarely communicates, even though it talks a lot.

We’ve heard so much about these statements and the variations. We have even experienced much of these.

But in the past few weeks, I have come across photography projects that make me think that we are making an attempt to communicate, even if in baby steps. We might not really communicate with the ones we have to, but we have started to reach out to strangers.

It was in this attempt that I began the Humans of Bangalore project. It is a slow but steady start.

The inspiration, of course, was the Humans of New York Project, started by Brandon Stanton. And that started a whole new bunch of projects in each city like Humans of Melbourne, Humans of Sydney, Humans of India, Humans of Seattle etc.

And as I explored further, I discovered more such people trying to find the strangers around them.

100 Strangers, for instance. The project is described as “The One Hundred Strangers project is a learning group for people who want to improve the social and technical skills needed for taking portraits of strangers and telling their stories. The method is learning by doing.”

The challenge is to take photographs of a 100 strangers, with a small story about the stranger. It gotta be true. It is a little like the confidence building activities they made us go through once in school, but much more fun and interesting.

These are among the few that I’ve discovered. But considering every photographer is approaching a 100 strangers or more, and perhaps two of them in that get inspired to start something similar… I guess, the network will get stronger again?